Monday, June 30, 2014

Why Does the Left Hate Native American Names?

The Left is apparently on the warpath to expunge all references to Native American peoples from our lexicon. And it’s not just the Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians and other sports franchises under threat of this ethnic cleansing of our language.

If successful, the Left’s war on Native American words will remove practically all verbal evidence of the people who occupied these lands before the invasion of the English, Germans, Dutch, Irish, Mexicans and others. Their legacy will survive only in textbooks, museums and casinos — and most Americans completely ignore two out of three of those.

Call the White House today and tell President Obama that he can scrub the mention of Islam from reports on terrorism, but he can’t take away our Native American names.

During the interview, which aired Thursday on NBC’s Today, Lauer brought up a recent statement made by [GM CEO Mary] Barra about missing her son’s junior prom: “My kids told me the one job they are going to hold me accountable for is ‘Mom.’ ”

Lauer followed up: “Given the pressures of this job at General Motors, can you do both well?”

Twitterers and pundits want to know if he would have asked that question of a male CEO, because if not, he’s sexist. Lauer points out that Today has actually done a series on the challenges of working fathers, and that he was merely following up on Barra’s remarks on the topic in a Forbes article, which he would have done for anyone.

But, Matt, what you don’t seem to understand, is that you violated the speech code because you suggested that Motherhood is a full-time job, and this is not tolerable in a post-gender society.

Of course, as any Mom (or Dad) knows, it is more difficult for a mother to maintain a full-time career. There’s a sense of fulfillment and wholeness that comes from engagement with her children, because of a primal bond that men can never fully comprehend. When that is interrupted, it creates tension, and pain, and worry and a sense of loss.

None of this means that women should be restricted to quarters after childbirth. But let’s be honest, the challenge for her is greater than for her husband.

And this is not denigrating to women — in fact, it’s elevating.

Motherhood is heroic, and crucial, and desperately essential. It is the most important work on earth. Being the CEO of GM is secondary. And there’s nothing wrong with saying so. If fact, failing to recognize that, and trying to elevate extra-domestic careerism above Motherhood, is dehumanizing to women everywhere.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Supreme Court says abortion opponents have free speech rights too

The Supreme Court today unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law that required a 35-foot protest-free "buffer zone" around abortion clinics, saying that the statute violated the First Amendment rights of pro-life protestors. The ruling in McCullen v. Coakley also has implications for municipalities that have imposed their own "buffer zone" laws around abortion clinics.

The 2007 law aimed to keep protesters least 35 feet from the entrances of abortion clinics to prevent confrontations, but the US Supreme Court ruled that it went too far and prevented the free speech of law-abiding abortion opponents who want to approach people going to the clinics.

The high court’s justices had indicated when they heard the case in January that the state needed to find other ways to address safety concerns and prevent the opponents from impeding access to clinics without limiting people’s free speech.

The opinion stated that the law was unconstitutional as it blocked free speech demonstrations on public roads and sidewalks, in addition to singling out abortion clinics as opposed to any other health facility. The Court affirmed that the law was far too broad and was a substantial burden on the free-speech rights of pro-lifers for what the law was intended to accomplish. Pro-life sidewalk counselors in Massachusetts were unable to have conversations with or distribute literature to women who were seeking abortions as a result of this law.

A state is not prohibited from creating laws that are tailored to a particular clinic, but the broad law challenged in this case was ruled to be unconstitutional.

Being against abortion does not nullify ones freedom of speech rights guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Kudos to the Supreme Court for pointing out the obvious.

This is all about control. Leftists want to control everything: Communism by stealth

Corner Canyon High School hasn't even opened yet, and it's already facing controversy. The new school, scheduled to open in 2013 in Draper, Utah, announced this week that it had chosen its mascot and school colors.

According to KSTU-TV Fox 13, future students within the school's boundaries were mailed ballots to vote for the sports teams' colors and mascot. The colors navy, silver and white were selected and the Charger was named the mascot -- the first in Utah to use it.

The Chargers wasn't the most popular team name with the kids. Instead, the top name was the Cougars, getting 23 percent of the votes. Other choices included the Chargers, Diamondbacks, Falcons, Raptors, Broncos, Bears and Cavaliers.

But the Cougar was rejected as the mascot because board members decided it might be seen as offensive to middle-aged women.

As pointed out on TV shows like Courteney Cox's "Cougar Town" and Tina Fey's "30 Rock" (one episode titled "Cougars" featured the 41-year-old Fey going on a date with a 20-year-old), the term has become popularly known to describe an older woman who dates younger men. Even online dating websites have popped up specifically for the "cougar" crowd, connecting interested males with females that are 15-30 years their senior.

There are, of course, other teams that already use the team name Cougars, including three other high schools in the state. As Prep Rally points out, even Utah's biggest college, Brigham Young University, uses the animal as its mascot which is probably why so many kids voted for it.

But those teams existed before the term "cougar" had its place in popular culture and it became more common for stars like Demi Moore to date someone half her age, such as her ex-husband Ashton Kutcher. Back then, a cougar was just a fierce animal also referred to as a puma or mountain lion.

Friday, June 27, 2014

For decades, they have been as much a part of Wimbledon as Pimm’s, strawberries and queuing.

But it seems ball boys are on the brink of extinction – at least as far as the commentators are concerned.

In a sign that political correctness has reached the courts of Wimbledon, the traditional ‘ball boys’ and ‘ball girls’ are being replaced with the rather more modern ‘ball kids’.

Sue Barker twice used the description on BBC1 yesterday as she reported on the Duchess of Cornwall meeting ‘ball kids’ during her visit to the tournament. And despite the All England Club insisting it had no plans to stop using the term ball boys, its official Wimbledon website also described how Camilla had greeted a ‘row of ball kids’.

It follows repeated use of the ‘ball kids’ expression during BBC 5 Live’s coverage of the recent French Open.

Hollywood suicide: He is the Brit who conquered Tinsletown. Now Gary Oldman faces ostracism after a spectacularly obscene and non-PC rant against the movie elite

Hollywood has recoiled in horror after British star Gary Oldman unveiled his most shocking persona to date — as a liberal-baiting, political-correctness-hating conservative.

However, it was Oldman’s attack on the hypocrisy of political correctness and his defence of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks that has landed him in deep trouble.

Denouncing the double standards of Hollywood, Oldman chose to defend two fellow stars who have earned pariah status after allegedly making anti-Semitic or homophobic remarks.

Oldman urged people to ‘get over’ Gibson’s notorious anti-Jewish slurs when, arrested for suspected drink-driving in 2006, he told a police officer: ‘F****** Jews . . . the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’

Gibson’s outburst came just two years after his film The Passion Of Christ had been attacked for demonising the Jews.

Commenting on Gibson’s sins, Oldman said: ‘I just think political correctness is crap . . . Get over it.’

He went on: ‘He got drunk and said a few things, but we’ve all said those things. It’s the hypocrisy of it that drives me crazy.’

Gibson, now forced to finance his own films, ‘is in a town that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him’.

Oldman continued: ‘But some Jewish guy in his office somewhere hasn’t turned and said: “That f****** Kraut” or “F*** those Germans”, whatever it is? We all hide and try to be so politically correct.’

Turning to actor Alec Baldwin, also persona non grata in showbusiness circles for making a string of homophobic remarks, Oldman said he ‘didn’t blame him’ after calling a persistent reporter an ‘F-A-G’.

Oldman said he loathed the way Left-wing comedians get away with saying what others would be condemned for — and used appalling language to demonstrate what he meant.

‘Well, if I called [Democrat leader] Nancy Pelosi a c***,’ he said, ‘I can’t really say that. But [comedians] Bill Maher and John Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it.’

As for the Oscars, anyone who didn’t vote for 12 Years A Slave — black British director Steve McQueen’s excoriating attack on slavery — risked being labelled a racist, Oldman argued.

Germany has a tradition of blacking up, often for theatrical purposes, that despite its burgeoning ethnic minority population and the fact that it is now unthinkable in the UK and the U.S., still continues to this day.

The Sydney Opera House has cancelled a controversial talk by Muslim writer and activist Uthman Badar titled "Honour killings are morally justified" after widespread condemnation of its inclusion in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

In a statement the Opera House appeared to blame the talk's title for giving the "wrong impression", while announcing that it had decided not to proceed with the session.

"The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is intended to be a provocation to thought and discussion, rather than simply a provocation," the Opera House wrote on Facebook.

"It is always a matter of balance and judgement, and in this case a line has been crossed."

Mr Badar told Fairfax Media on Tuesday that the session's cancellation is revealing of the extent and influence of Islamophobia in Australia.

Honour killings are the murder of women deemed to have brought shame or dishonour on their family.

Uthman Badar was scheduled to argue that such acts are seized on by Westerners as a symbol of everything they dislike about another culture.

The announcement sparked condemnation and calls for a boycott on social media from those arguing the Opera House stage should not be used as a platform for such radical and confronting propositions.

"I think it's free speech and outrage for its own sake, not for the sake of seeking truth," Ms Gordon-Smith said. "If it's not hate speech, it's seriously ignorant speech."

Feminist author Eva Cox said the inclusion of Mr Badar's presentation was "tacky" and possibly unethical if the title turns out to misrepresent the extent of his argument. She said it carried the risk of further demonising Muslims in eyes of many Australians.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Khloe Kardashian under fire for posting a photo wearing Native American headdress

KHLOE Kardashian has come under fire over a Native American outfit she wore to her niece North West’s birthday party.

A photo posted on Instagram, which she captioned “Ray Of Clouds. Chirping of birds. Gurgling of water. Granted desire. One with water. #kidchella my first Coachella!!!,” has inspired some rather negative comments.

One angry follower wrote “Appalled & feel so disrespected and I CAN say this because I’m a full blooded Native American! You’re only making yourself look like a fool! Smh……delete your photo. Everything we do and have and live as people has SO MUCH more meaning to it than what it may seem.”

Another wrote “Ugh it’s so tiring explaining racist to the white privileged.”

The photo was taken during Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s birthday festival for their one-year-old daughter North West on Saturday, cleverly titled “Kidchella” in a nod to the Coachella rock binge.

Grandma Kylie Jenner also shared a close-up photo with Khloe in her Native American headdress.

The post took the form of a letter to Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili in which she implored him to "stop vigorous attempts to bring West's ‘fecal masses’ in the mentality of the people by means of propaganda".

The singer was responding to a gay pride parade that had been organised to pass through the yard of an Orthodox Church in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

On Saturday the singer blamed her husband for the comments after they were reported in the Australian media on Friday.

"Ms Iveri and her husband have both made public statements in the last 48 hours with regards to comments attributed to Ms Iveri," Opera Australia said on Monday. "She has unreservedly apologised for those comments and views.

On Saturday, Iveri posted a message on Facebook saying that her husband had been using her account at the time, describing him as "a very religious man with a tough attitude towards gay people". She accuses him of changing her original letter and posting it under her name.

"You might imagine that I was not happy with that at all and I immediately deleted it when I saw the text about half an hour later. This text does not express my own opinion," she wrote.

The original comments on Iveri's Facebook page prompted a backlash on social media, including calls for Opera Australia to drop her. The Opera Australia Facebook page has had more than 1000 posts on the matter, with many people threatening to boycott the company and others suggesting they would cancel their subscriptions. "I'm really shocked at Opera Australia's response to this," one man wrote. "Having been a ticket buyer, and having even been in one of your productions, I feel disappointed in how this is being handled."

"As a loyal subscriber for the past decade, I am now (for the first time) questioning whether I should support your organisation," another said.

Opera Australia's decision to drop Iveri follows reports over the weekend that La Monnaie Opera in Brussels had dropped her from its 2015 production of A Masked Ball.

Soon before Opera Australia announced Iveri's removal, a spokeswoman for Qantas, one of the company's major sponsors, said the airline was "deeply concerned" by Iveri's comments and was "discussing them with Opera Australia."

Iveri last performed in Australia Spanish company La Fura del Baus' production of A Masked Ball, which opened Opera Australia's Melbourne season in 2013.

She was also due to perform with Opera Australia's Melbourne production of Tosca later this year, yet it is unclear whether Opera Australia's decision to cancel her contract also includes that performance.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

A California law that requires the sponsors of ballot initiatives to identify themselves on the petitions they circulate to voters violates the constitutional law to speak anonymously, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday.

"Forced disclosures of this kind are significant encroachments on First Amendment rights," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 decision.

It's not hard for the public to find out who's behind a proposed initiative, the court said - the names must be filed with the state or city elections office and published in a newspaper of general circulation.

But requiring sponsors' names to appear on initiative petitions violates the right of anonymous speech, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Carlos Bea.

O'Scannlain cited a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Ohio's ban on anonymous campaign leaflets, and a 1999 high court ruling overturning Colorado's requirement that petition-circulators wear name tags. Both rulings said anonymity can protect speakers from harassment and focuses public attention on the message rather than the messenger.

James Bopp, lawyer for the initiative sponsors, said the court had properly condemned the state law requiring sponsors' names on petitions as one of the "burdens that might chill the people's speech."

UK: In response to the ‘Trojan horse’ schools scandal, in which academies in Birmingham were caught inculcating in pupils something possibly Islamist, education secretary Michael Gove asserted that everyone in British society must start promoting British values. But given that the lustre of God, Queen and Country has dimmed somewhat since Victoria popped her clogs, defining what exactly British values are has proved rather difficult. Which is why UK pollsters ComRes decided to ask the British public what they thought.

And what did the public say? Warm beer and village cricket? Winding roads and red pillar boxes? Monarchy and a sense of humour? No, the overwhelming winner of this contest was free speech. That’s right: at a time when other voguish but nebulous ideas on ComRes’s list - such as equality, fairness and tolerance - are parroted by a seemingly endless supply of quangocrats and hackademics, 48 per cent of those surveyed still opted for freedom of speech as the most important ‘British value’.

It’s a pity, then, that British politicians are seemingly incapable of heeding such a positive public sentiment. Of course, they say they support free speech; and they never shrink from an opportunity to associate themselves with it. But they don’t really believe in it. Free speech is great, they think, just so long as what is being said or expressed is within certain acceptable boundaries.

But free speech is not a value in the politicians’ sense. It is not quantitatively commensurate with ‘protection’ or ‘tolerance’; it is not capable of being part-exchanged with other so-called values. Properly speaking, free speech is not really a thing to be distributed, calibrated and balanced by the state at all. It is simply not the state’s to divide. Rather, it is a fundamental freedom, a lived liberty, that allows individuals the space to think and speak for themselves, without external compulsion. The point about free speech is that it is speech free from external compulsion; the state’s role in free speech is to guarantee its own absence, not assert its presence as some sort of values accountant, totting up the worth of each idea, and balancing the intellectual books.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Parents attack 'sexist' shoe ads: 3,000 protest against posters which use blue text to describe tree-climbing boys and pink for girls who 'love comfort and style'

Boys roll in mud and climb trees, while girls prefer sitting quietly and playing with dolls.

Or at least that’s what adverts for Clarks shoes would have you believe – triggering an online backlash from parents who complain the firm is being ‘sexist and offensive’.

The shoe shop has been accused of gender stereotyping on its posters which suggest boys need hard-wearing shoes for running around, while girls are more concerned with looking pretty.

One of the adverts, which are displayed in store, proclaims in blue: ‘Because boys test their shoes to destruction, so do we.’

Another poster, in pink, says: ‘Because girls love comfort and style, we design both into our shoes.’

Last night the firm said it was ‘never our intention to cause offence’ as it faced a barrage of complaints on Twitter.

Emma Dixon, a lawyer from Islington, north London, and mother of two boys and a girl, launched an online petition calling for the removal of the adverts, which last night had been signed by more than 3,000 people.

A spokesman for Clarks said: ‘The wording in these in-store marketing displays was chosen to reference qualities that our customers value in children’s shoes. It is never our intention to cause offence.

One of the lessons that Andrew Lampart learned from being on his school’s debate team was to gather facts for both sides of an argument. So last month when his law class was instructed to prepare for a debate on gun control, Andrew went online using the school’s Internet service.

“I knew it was important to get facts for both sides of the case,” said the 18-year-old at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut.

Andrew decided to set aside his debate preparation and started researching other conservative websites. He soon discovered that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.

When Andrew tried to log onto the National Rifle Association’s website, he realized there was a problem – a big problem.

“Their website was blocked,” he told me. Andrew decided to try the Second Amendment Foundation’s website. That too, was blocked.

His curiosity got the best of him – so Andrew tried logging on to several pro-gun control websites. Imagine his surprise when he discovered the pro-gun control websites were not blocked.

“I became curious as to why one side was blocked and the other side was not,” he said.

Andrew decided to set aside his debate preparation and started researching other conservative websites. He soon discovered that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.

Andrew found that even Pope Francis was blocked from the school’s web service. But although he could not access the Vatican website, the school allowed him to access an Islamic website.

Andrew gathered his evidence and requested a meeting with the principal. The principal referred him to the superintendent, which he did. The superintendent promised to look into the matter and fix the problem. “I gave him a week to fix the problem,” Andrew said. “But nothing had been done.”

So last Monday, Andrew took his mountain of evidence to the school board.

“They seemed surprised,” he said. “They told me they were going to look into the problem.”

Since the school board didn’t resolve the problem, I decided to take a crack at it.

Superintendent Jody Goeler sent me a rather lengthy letter explaining what happened.

He admitted there are “apparent inconsistencies” in the school district’s filtering system “particularly along conservative and liberal lines.”

Without getting into the weeds here, the school district is blaming the blocking on Dell SonicWall, their content filtering service. They said they are waiting for Dell SonicWall to clarify its process for assigning websites to categories.

Dell SonicWall did not return my telephone call so I can’t tell you whether the district’s statement is the gospel truth or baloney. But something smells fishy.

The National Rifle Association, Red State, SarahPac.com, National Right to Life, Second Amendment Foundation, Paul Ryan for Congress, Town Hall, TeaParty.org, ProtectMarriage.com, and Christianity.com are just some of the websites the school blocked.

And they still remain blocked.

Andrew Lampart has done his community and his nation a great public service by exposing the politically correct firewall that was erected at Nonnewaug High School.

And now we must do our part and demand a free exchange of ideas not just in Woodbury, Connecticut, but around the nation.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

"The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team's name 'disparaging to Native Americans.' The landmark case, which appeared before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, was filed on behalf of five Native Americans. It was the second time such a case was filed. ...

Federal trademark law does not permit registration of trademarks that 'may disparage' individuals or groups or 'bring them into contempt or disrepute.' The ruling pertains to six different trademarks associated with the team, each containing the word 'Redskin.'"

The recent decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to de-register the name of the Washington Redskins is a serious matter, fraught with dangers not only to trademarks and trademark owners, but to patents and patent holders, in addition to copyrights and copyright owners, as well.

Commercially, what the ruling means is that while the team's owners won't be forced to change the team's name to something more saccharine (or politically correct, e.g., "The Big Hulking Guys Who Chase Obloids"), it has lost the right to control the usage of the team's name in its logos and merchandising endeavors. That is, the name is up for grabs to whoever wants to sell T-shirts, mugs, glasses and apparel under that name.

The potential or real loss of revenue resulting from the decision is irrelevant. The Patent and Trademark Office's decision, based on a suit filed by five individuals, constituted the theft of property, on the most specious of reasons, that the "name" (and associated symbols) was "disparaging." The Office as much as said: "Your name and symbols are offensive to a certain protected class of citizens, and hurts its feelings, so this agency is delegitimizing said name and symbols as protectable and licensable property. The exclusivity of said name and symbols is hereafter null and void."

Boren's article goes on to report:

As a league official said, "The decision does not mean that the team loses its trademark protection. It loses the benefits of federal registration, but the team will continue to protect its trademarks against third parties using it. The team has what is called ‘common law rights,' which do not require a trademark registration."

Gabriel Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University, agreed with that interpretation. "This ruling doesn't eliminate the ability of the Washington Redskins to use their trademark or prevent others from using it," Feldman told the Post's Mark Maske. "But it does limit their ability to enforce their rights."

Friday, June 20, 2014

The ACLU’s latest lawsuit on warrantless cellphone tracking has hit a dead end

This is really a 4th Amendment case but it concerns speech so I think it deserves a place here

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued a local police department over the warrantless use of cellphone tracking devices, demanding that officials in Sarasota, Fla., hand over court documents concerning the practice.

The suit has now been thrown out. On Tuesday, State Circuit Court Judge Charles Williams found that he didn't have the jurisdiction to hear the case.

That's because even though the case concerns a local police department, it was working on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service at the time that it deployed the stingray. Stingrays are used to collect information on nearby cellphones by setting up a fake cell tower; when wireless phones try to connect with the stingray, those contacts get logged by law enforcement.

The ACLU claims this is a violation of privacy. The group said it tried to get Sarasota police to produce the application it filed to a judge for permission to use the stingray, as well as the judge's order. But then, the ACLU said, the U.S. Marshals whisked the documents away to a federal facility, beyond the reach of Florida's public records law. Now the ACLU must either file a federal FOIA request to the U.S. Marshals or continue fighting the court case.

A Webster man says his apartment complex manager told him his American flag was a “threat to the Muslim community,” and that he has to take it down. But he’s not giving up without a fight.

Stepping onto Duy Tran’s balcony in Webster, one thing is clear: “It means a lot to me,” he said.

He’s talking about his American flag that he proudly put up when he moved in just a few days ago. But then an apartment manager at the Lodge on El Dorado told him he had to take it down.

“What really stunned me is that she said it’s a threat towards the Muslim community,” said Tran. “I’m not a threat toward anybody.”

We tried to ask a manager if that’s exactly what was said, but she just handed us a statement, refused to answer any questions, and called an officer to escort us off the property, before we could press any further:

“While the Lodge on El Dorado admires our resident’s patriotism, we must enforce our property rules and guidelines. Such guidelines maintain the aesthetics of our apartment community and provide for the safety of all residents. The apartment community already proudly displays our country’s flag in a safe and appropriate manner at the entrances to our community.”

But we saw other patriotic symbols hanging from other balconies in the complex, and Tran doesn’t plan to budge.

We have not heard of any residents complaining about any flags at the complex, or any of the patriotic items we saw. In fact, we spoke to several neighbors who say they want Tran’s flag to stay.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Apology

No posts today. I have just had surgery on my right hand to remove a small cancer. So I am supposed to give my hand a rest for a couple of days. But you can't keep a good blogger down for long so I should be back soon.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The US Supreme Court said on Monday it would rule on whether violent threats posted on social media could merit criminal charges, or whether they are protected as free speech.

The nine justices of the nation's top court said they would take on the case of Anthony Elonis, a Pennsylvania resident sentenced to four years in jail and three years supervised release over threatening messages he posted on Facebook.

The messages, including death threats against his ex-wife, were written in the style of rap lyrics.

In the appeal, which will be taken up in the fall, the court said it will consider whether "conviction of threatening another person ... requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten."

Elonis has said he never seriously intended to make an attempt on his ex-wife's life or carry out any of the other threats, without proof of such an intent, criminalising his Facebook posts violates his First Amendment right to free speech.

In the appeal to the Supreme Court, his lawyers explain that, after his wife suddenly left with their two children, Elonis, then 27, fell into a depression and was fired from the amusement park where he worked.

On December 8, 2010, he was charged with threatening clients and employees of the park, threats against his ex-wife, against police officers and an FBI agent, as well as threats involving a preschool class.

During his trial, Elonis said he was inspired by rapper Eminem in his posts, some of which contained lewd and violent passages.

"I've got enough explosives to take care of the state police and the sheriff's department," he posted in November 2010, as cited in his appeal.

The Supreme Court delivered a major victory on Monday to an anti-abortion group that sought to challenge an Ohio law that bans campaign statements deemed to be false.

The justices, in a unanimous decision, ruled that the Susan B. Anthony List can go ahead with a lawsuit challenging the law as a violation of free-speech rights.

Both liberal and conservative groups have criticized the law, saying it has a chilling effect on political speech. Even Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine declined to defend the law in court, sending his deputies to argue for the state.

The Susan B. Anthony List was accused of violating the law during the 2010 election, when it accused then-Ohio Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion because he backed the new health care law.

Driehaus threatened to take them before the Ohio commission that reviews the accuracy of political ads.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas cited concerns about the chilling effect on groups wishing to run political ads.

Thomas said the existence of the law already has a chilling effect on political speech because people and interest groups have reason to believe their statements may be censured. The court warned that the law could impose "burdens" on "electoral speech."

The case began during the 2010 election when the Susan B. Anthony List planned to put up billboards ads attacking Driehaus. The ads accused Driehaus of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion because he supported President Obama's new health care law. Driehaus, a Democrat who opposes abortion, claimed the ads misrepresented the true facts and therefore violated the false speech law.

After Driehaus filed a formal complaint, the billboard owner feared legal action and declined to post the ads. The Ohio Elections Commission found probable cause that the ads violated the law, but Driehaus later dropped the case after losing his re-election bid.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

In case you missed the origins of this story earlier in the week, George Will took to his usual platform at the Washington Post with some words of caution regarding federal government intervention regarding sexual assaults on the nation’s college campuses. In it, he attempted to inject corrective remedies into some of the hyperbole currently engulfing the topic. Of course, in his usual fashion, Will led off with a paragraph which seemed designed to poke a stick in a few wasp nests:

"Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle."

A careful reading of Will’s full editorial would show that he was essentially making two points. First, the “math” being cited to define the number of sexual assaults taking place was unfit for a 3rd grade Common Core tutorial. Second, Will noted that expanding and inflating the definition of sexual assaults to include micro-agressions – such as a boy staring for too long at a young coed with a low cut blouse – would tend to dilute the pool of actual assaults and diminish the seriousness of the real problem.

Such a stance brought the usual list of suspects up on their hind legs and into an immediate attack posture. This culminated in a coalition of Democratic Senators (Feinstein, Blumenthal, Tammy Baldwin and Robert Casey) penning a letter to the WaPo, chastising them for allowing Will to breathe the same air as the rest of us.

After running their letter and litany of complaints, this weekend the Post ran a rare response from George Will. Here’s a key sample.

"The administration asserts that only 12 percent of college sexual assaults are reported. Note well: I did not question this statistic. Rather, I used it.

I cited one of the calculations based on it that Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute has performed {link}. So, I think your complaint is with the conclusion that arithmetic dictates, based on the administration’s statistic. The inescapable conclusion is that another administration statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college is insupportable and might call for tempering your rhetoric about “the scourge of sexual assault.”

The Senators were likely faced with the difficult task of flipping back and forth to dictionary.com to translate Will’s writing, so we should probably have some sympathy.

Monday, June 16, 2014

YOU should think twice before setting up a Twitter account impersonating someone else.

Jonathan Daniel, 29, from Illinois found that out the hard way after police raided his house and arrested him over the account @peoriamayor which spoofed the town’s Mayor.

Twitter hosts thousands of accounts parodying athletes, actors and politicians. Daniel thought his account would be a good way to entertain friends. “It was created to be a joke,” said Daniel, a father of two boys. “I thought my friends would find it funny.”

His friends may have been amused but Peoria’s Mayor, Jim Ardis, was upset that the account suggested he was a drug addict and associated with prostitutes.

Mayor Ardis complained to the police prompting the April 15 raid on Daniel’s house to unmask him as the fake account owner.

Daniel’s house was searched and he was arrested with misdemeanour for impersonating a public official.

Lucky for Daniel, the State’s Attorney of Peoria County decided not to charge him. Had he been charged he faced one year in prison and a $US2500 fine.

But it doesn’t end there. Daniel, a short-order cook at a local bar, is now suing the mayor and six other city officials for violating his constitutional rights.

“Political parody is a great tradition in the United States — from Thomas Nast to Jon Stewart,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and Daniel’s lead attorney.

Treasurer Joe Hockey’s decision to sue Fairfax Media for defamation over the now-notorious front-page story “Treasurer for sale” raises interesting questions about politicians suing to protect their reputation, allied with the protection of freedom of speech in Australia.

Hockey claims the newspapers in question – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times – alleged that he accepted, or was prepared to accept, bribes; that he corruptly solicited payments in order to influence his decision; and that he corruptly sold privileged access to businesspeople and lobbyists in return for donations to the Liberal Party.

A debate is underway about the balance between freedom of speech and protection against racially offensive conduct. There similarly needs to be a debate in Australia about defamation law.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

French police black-up, eat bananas and scratch themselves like monkeys at party

Many people are clearly amused by what they see as a facial resemblance between Africans and higher African primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas. It is proving hard for the Left to eradicate that amusement. But it's OK to portray GW Bush as a chimpanzee, of course

Police in a Paris suburb are facing the sack after blackening up their faces with boot polish and eating bananas during a fancy dress party.

The officers, from Kremlin-Bicetre, thought pictures of the party would remain private, however the images which show them smiling with their blacked up faces and afro wigs appeared on social media, where they quickly spread.

One of the photos even shows one officer with a bunch of bananas, scratching himself if he were a monkey, with a bucket of nuts on the ground in front of him.

The primary complaint of health care providers employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is retaliation by management - including “sham peer reviews” and even dismissal - for speaking up about serious deficiencies in the VA’s medical system, several VA doctors said during a two-day meeting in Washington on how to improve veterans’ health care.

Dr. Rafael Montecino, a surgeon with the VA in eastern Kansas, complained that “when you try to make things more efficient, the system is working against you. They say that you are creating a hostile environment.”

And “when you complain, or you say like ‘You know, this is not the right thing,’ then you become a target and they gang together to get you out of there,” Dr. Montecino added.

“You have to be willing to put your career on the line, frankly,” Benishek told them, recounting that he had been fired by the VA himself for voicing his concerns, but that he was eventually re-hired because of the scarcity of surgeons in his rural area.

The majority of the doctors who testified complained of “sham peer reviews” - a name given to the abuse of a medical peer review process to attack a doctor for personal or other non-medical reasons.

Friday, June 13, 2014

The infectiously upbeat song, which has generated hundreds of copycat covers on YouTube, has been criticised as a jarring choice given the sustained attacks against Walmart over the low-wage conditions of some of its employees.

At the end of his performance, in front of 14,000 Walmart workers and shareholders in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Williams invited attendees to "put your hands together for Walmart guys, for making the world a happier place".

According to Business Insider, neither Pharrell or any of the celebrities who performed - including Robin Thicke, Sarah McLaughlan and Harry Connick jr - were paid, because they want to curry favour with the retail giant which is visited by 35 million shoppers every day. Hugh Jackman performed at the same event last year.

Recently, Walmart has been the subject of a renewed wave of criticism centred on revelations that many of its employees are forced to rely on food stamps and other government subsidies to supplement their income. According to one highly publicised report Walmart employees receive $6.2 billion in government subsidies annually - a claim which has been emphatically disputed by the company.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Two can play the name-calling game

In America, we still have the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion to speak our minds, defend our Church and, most importantly, abide by and share the timeless truth of our Lord Jesus Christ without having some socially engineered, radical, and extremist social agenda label us as "haters" or "racists."

My not supporting the sin and aberration of homosexuality does not make me a hater or a homophobe. It makes me a Christian who recognizes sin, and I will not enable a selfish desire to wallow in it. Sin hurts God and it hurts us all.

It is because I recognize each person's full humanity and potential as a child of God that I do not support this so-called lifestyle. It is with love, not hate, that I refuse to enable people. God made us for much better things than the depravity of sexual sin, especially homosexual sin which defies natural law as well.

Two can easily play the name game where each calls the other a name and where labels are thrown around, and this would then create a mob mentality of hurt against each other; but where will that get us?

I could easily label homosexual advocates and activists as intolerant, hateful, anti-Christian heterophobes. I could go so far as to say that they are flat-out Christophobes, afraid and hateful of anything that is Christian. But does that sound fair? Sometimes it sounds pretty darn accurate to me.

Furthermore, just because I am not a supporter of Obamacare or the president it does not make me a racist; it makes me a person who still cares about the sanctity of human life and refuses to support a presidency and an administration that advocates for the killing of innocent human life.

Am I a racist because I do not support President Obama who loves, funds, and supports death merchant organizations like Planned Parenthood that have obliterated one-third of America's black population in the last 100 years? Am I a racist because I try to teach people about the eugenicist plans that target minorities?

I love receiving emails from people responding to issues posted on my website, both positive and negative. Some pieces are written by fellow hosts, bloggers and other writers, but all are issues worth discussing.

I recently posted one about the “birther” issue. There are still investigations as to President Obama’s birthplace. The only people who accept 100 percent that Obama is hiding nothing about his birth, his school years, and his true love for this country are the ones who think right-wing, Bible-believing, conservatives like me should not have the right to freedom of speech simply because we don’t think like them.

Yup. The “thought police” are out in force. One of these thought police actually posted on Facebook that I was racist, and the single, simple proof was that I questioned this president’s birthplace.

The logic of the left always astounds me. Would that same conclusion hold true if the president were white? The educated left doesn’t need dictionaries or thesauruses because words mean only what they want them to mean. Period.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

If nothing else, Warren Ryan's use of the term "darky" during a football call draws attention to the remarkable power of words.

Ryan's defence that the word appeared in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone With The Wind might seem a tad lame at first blush – after all, the sensitivities involved in dealing with racism, especially in sport, would not exactly be news to someone in his position.

But is Ryan a dinosaur that time has left behind? Or are we so worried about even appearing to hold a racist view that we find ourselves "investigating" people for being in the same room as someone who drops a howler?

This is certainly the situation Ryan's co-commentator David Morrow finds himself in.

Ryan has a point, in as much as being vilified for referring to a work of literature takes us into troubling territory.

Such controversies have always been with us – it's the context that changes.

When the Gone With The Wind film appeared in 1939, no one batted an eyelid at words like "darky". The firestorm was over Clark Gable's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

In 2014, you wouldn't be arrested for tearing pictures of golliwogs out of Enid Blyton books in Martin Place, screaming "This book is a f---ing disgrace!"

You can't buy golliwog books any more, and it's not just kids' books. Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus was on high school reading lists in the '70s. You would be hard-pressed to find a copy in a school library anywhere today.

Our caution about hurting the feelings of others is admirable, and a vast improvement on the self-serving assumptions of the past.

But we must not rewrite history.

Cruel racism is easy to spot and we do give a damn, but by the same token we don't want The Merchant of Venice going the way of The Nigger of the Narcissus.

Ms Pillay is an Indian and it always amuses me when Indians accuse others of racism. India is the home of the most fierce racism. Indian castes are essentially races and higher castes will kill lower castes who get too uppity. Physician heal thyself?

The recent rise in xenophobic rethoric from EU oliticians could pave the way for human rights violations, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Tuesday in Geneva.

At the opening of the UN Human Rights Council‘s summer session, Pillay said that the xenophobic, racist and religiously intolerant discourse could undermine the fight against discrimination in Europe.

"There is a road to perpetration of human rights violations. And hate speech - particularly by political leaders - is on that road," she said.

Pillay added that the recent deadly attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels was connected to this climate of extremism.

The UN rights chief pointed out that the newly elected European Parliament will include several extremists, including the former chief of the German National Democratic Party, Udo Voigt, who has said that "Europe is the continent of white people and it should remain that way."

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

U. Chicago Students Go Ballistic After Dan Savage Says 'Tranny'

Well known gay author and advice columnist Dan Savage recently spoke at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics seminar. Some students who attended the event denounced him for repeatedly using the word "tranny," which made one transgender person in the audience feel uncomfortable and "unsafe." According to The Chicago Maroon:

The incident occurred when, according to several sources, Savage and [IOP fellow Ana Marie Cox] began discussing his personal history as a gay man. According to a first-year student and member of the LGBTQ community who asked to be identified as Hex, Savage used the slur t—– as an example in an anecdote about reclaiming words. Cox then added, "I used to make jokes about t—-ies," audience members recounted.

In a statement, the IOP said, "A guest used language that provoked a spirited debate. The speaker was discussing how hurtful words can be repurposed and used to empower; at no point did he direct any slurs at anyone."

Nevertheless, an activist started a Change.org petition to pressure IOP to issue some sort of condemnation of Savage. The petition also demanded that the University of Chicago vigorously police usage of "hate speech" in the future.

Ironically, Savage's entire purpose for bringing up the word was to discuss strategies for overcoming its negative and hurtful associations.

See below. No argument, no facts, just assertion and abuse. Received June 4 by Marc Morano. The sender was given as "Respect Science" [respect_science@mail.com] and the email was headed: "game over for you and yours"

I have waited many years to see what I am seeing now -- the long overdue awakening of intelligent life and political leadership on this planet, realizing that we cannot go on with greenhouse gas emissions at the rate we have without paying a terrible price.

You have been a terrible enemy of this awareness and intelligence, Mr. Morano. I have been among those who have watched your "work," always so sorry to see your lies, character assassinations, gleeful pursuit of wrong-headed goals. Nasty work by a nasty person. But your time of influence over now. I rejoice in this moment! wow! finally!

You should be ashamed of the role you have played, but I doubt you will allow yourself this realization. You should(but likely will not) suffer in fair measure equal to the suffering and damage you have set in motion, by relentless even gleeful assault on awareness and political will that is -- against all your efforts -- finally building now to unstoppable momentum. This momentum is looking, finally, equal to physical forces now unleashed on this planet. I take comfort knowing you have failed. Unfortunately a lot of suffering will yet ensue that you could have helped to prevent.

Awareness and truth are making your work more of a cartoon than it already was. I am so glad about this, have waited for it. 2014 is sadly very late for this to be happening, but we have a chance now that action, policy changes, energy advances will yet take place in time to spare people of coming centuries from the worst that can happen, due to the ignorance and idiocy of people like you. Actually YOU, not just people "like" you, others, sure, but YOU. Wow, how you can live with this I don't understand. May God have mercy on your soul. If it were up to me? no mercy at all. I'd castyou in the scene in Jurassic Park reboot, where T Rex gobbles you up with your pants down in the porta potty. Henceforth I dedicate that scene in the original Jurassic Park to you! cathartic!

Do us all a favor and shut up now. Please. The rest of us have work to do.

Monday, June 09, 2014

NY Cyber-Bullying Law may end up bullying free speech

In 2010, some cruel remarks on Facebook led to the arrest of Marquan Mackey-Meggs who attended Cohoes High School in New York state’s Albany County. His arrest resulted from a new cyber-bullying law. Now, in the year 2014, civil libertarians are concerned that application of this law could eventually lead to other kinds of arrests that go far beyond bullying.

Back in December 2010, Mackey-Meggs put together a Facebook page called the “Cohoes Flame.” Writing anonymously, he mentioned certain students by name and described their sexual exploits including insinuations that some were engaged in homosexual activity. In one case, he talked about a female student having 14 sexual partners. He even went on and mentioned the name of each partner. The students were between the ages of 13 and 16.

Mackey-Meggs was arrested and charged with eight counts of Internet bullying. He originally attempted to have his case dismissed on grounds of First Amendment protection, but the law was upheld, first by Cohoes City Court, and later by Albany County Judge Stephen Herrick. Herrick, however, added a new wrinkle by insisting the law should not apply to adult victims, but minors only.

This week, Mackey-Meggs’ case went before the New York’s Court of Appeals.

Corey Stoughton of the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation is representing Mackey-Meggs. She has asked the court to overturn his conviction, claiming it violates not only the First Amendment but also the 14th Amendment and its guarantee of equal protection under the law.

“Because Albany County has made no effort to demonstrate that this broad criminalization of speech is necessary to protect minors from harm, the court should strike the cyber-bullying law down on its face,” she said.

Albany County’s law includes in its examples of cyber-bullying,”sending hate mail, with no legitimate private, personal, or public purpose, with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person.”

Stoughton is concerned about the wide range of speech that can now be interpreted as having criminal intent:

“These terms encompass countless emails, text messages, and postings on social networking and other websites, putting thousands of people in Albany County in jeopardy of criminal prosecution for expressing anger, criticism, intimacy, parody, gossip, and opinion.”

Defending the law, Albany County Attorney Thomas Marcelle attempted to assure the public that this new law does not endanger free speech.

“Freedom of speech is not the issue…It was his desire to inflict harm on his victims that got him convicted of a crime, not his desire to enter into the marketplace of ideas….The Cyber-Bullying Law is precisely targeted at speech in the narrow circumstances where the communication has no purpose other than to inflict emotional harm upon a child — that is, in situations where the speaker has no intent to communicate ideas and is without the protections offered by the First Amendment.”

In point of fact, free speech is the issue and that does not suddenly become untrue simply because an attorney says so.

Our wise forefathers understood that speech would sometimes be offensive. Otherwise, there would have been no need to protect it. What would have been the purpose of a First Amendment if every spoken word was going to sound agreeable and kind?

Human beings are easily affected by bad sounding practices or emotions and it is easy for attorneys to point out such unpleasantness to inspire new laws.

But when a law is stated broadly, words such as “bullying” or “hate” turn the law into a Trojan Horse. Once inside those walls that once protected our freedom, the true implications of a law can end up forbidding all kinds of speech including sincere words from people who did not intend to either bully or hate.

As for hate, that too is a bad sounding word; that too can be a difficult motive to decipher. On the other hand, not all hate is wrong. Aren’t we supposed to hate things such as racism and injustice?

Yes, it would be better to have constructive dialogues rather than heated expression and name calling. But since designations such as “hate speech” and motives such as “bulling” seem to be in the eye of the beholder, the safest road is to simply protect all expression.

Deplorable -- and unfaithful to Jewry. By using the term for his own convenience he devalues the plight of all those who have suffered from real antisemitism

Attorney Jacob Hafter was miffed this week after District Court Judge Valorie Vega refused to allow him to “go dark” for a couple days during a long-scheduled trial to observe a religious holiday. (Hafter is an Orthodox Jew, and the holiday was Shavout, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the nation of Israel.)

Naturally, Hafter called Vega a racist anti-Semite. No, really, he did: “Thirty years of legal experience means nothing if you are anti-Semitic or racist,” Hafter wrote on Facebook. “We need to make sure that, especially in light of the concept of absolute judicial immunity, we have judges in office that [sic] will not purposefully trample on our constitutional rights just because they are intolerant of others.”

(Full disclosure: Vega is married to my Review-Journal colleague Howard Stutz, who happens to be Jewish. Oh, also it’s important to note that there is no evidence whatsoever that Vega’s decision was motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice.)

Vega asked Hafter to remove to take down the offending post, so as not to taint the jury in the case that he’s trying in her court, but he refused. “I don’t see anything offensive to this court or to the plaintiffs in it. I just see a recitation of what happened in a factual manner,” Hafter said.

Hafter is apparently so bad, even his mom says she will not vote for him in an upcoming race for District Court judge. Mother and son apparently had a falling out over money a few years ago, and he’s called her “a terrorist,” and “insane.”

Sunday, June 08, 2014

The singer has apologized for his appearance on the cover of Elle UK's July 2014 issue, which shows him wearing an indigenous headdress, CBC News reported.

The cover photo drew widespread condemnation on Twitter Tuesday and Wednesday, with a number of First Nations people expressing their offense at what they called an instance of "cultural appropriation."

One of Australia's pin-up technology successes, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, has been forced to apologise for an employee's presentation gone wrong.

According to engineer Jonathan Doklovic, software is like a "demanding, complaining and interrupting" girlfriend. He made the remarks at the company's two-day developer conference in Berlin on Wednesday.

He was refering to Maven - a program to simplify and standardise projects built using the software language Java - as his girlfriend.

The presentation provoked a social media backlash and prompted Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of the $3.5 billion software maker who has found much success in the US, to invoke Mahatma Gandhi in a bid to quell the ensuing social media storm.

He apologised for the actions but didn't say whether the engineer-in-question - who he originally hired - would lose his job.

Friday, June 06, 2014

Now blackface must not even be mentioned

A middle school history teacher in small-town southeastern Michigan has been placed on paid administrative leave because he informed students that white entertainers used to paint their faces black to imitate black people and showed kids a video about it.

The teacher is Alan Barron, reports the Monroe News. The 59-year-old teacher has taught in the local school district for well over three decades and is retiring in just two weeks.

The suspension occurred after an assistant principal observed Barron teaching an eighth-grade class. Barron’s topic for the day was racial segregation laws during the Jim Crow era. The lesson included a video which showed how white actors commonly used theatrical makeup known as blackface — a practice which began in the nineteenth century and lasted over 100 years.

The unidentified assistant principal concluded that Barron’s lesson about how entertainers used to be racist was itself racist, according to the local paper. The assistant principal also apparently ordered that Barron stop the video as it was being played.

Parents with kids at the school have overwhelmingly opposed the suspension.

As a result of the suspension, Barron cannot attend any school functions including an annual banquet during which he and other retiring teachers will be honored.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Australia: Apology finally squeezed out of public broadcaster that broadcast Leftist hate speech

NINE months after broadcasting an offensive skit featuring The Australian’s columnist Chris Kenny by The Chaser team, the ABC will tonight issue a comprehensive on-air apology as part of a formal defamation settlement that includes paying all legal costs and some damages.

Despite the ABC and The Chaser team vowing to contest the matter in court, backed by an internal review that found the skit met editorial standards for satire, the apology will tonight be broadcast on ABC1 at about 9pm, before the Jonah From Tonga show.

The Chaser team will not be permitted to republish the mat­erial or make public statements that detract from the settlement, to prevent a repeat of the way presenter Julian Morrow undermined managing director Mark Scott’s personal apology to Kenny in April.

Hours after that apology, Morrow tweeted a picture of Mr Scott in a compromising position and rejected his public statements, stating: “We are not taking any steps to settle the legal action. If the ABC wants to then that’s a matter for it.”

Mr Scott’s failure to act decisively in the Kenny matter has cast doubt on his tenure as the ABC’s boss and editor-in-chief.

The action stems from a skit on the Chaser’s election campaign show, Hamster Decides, that ­depicted Kenny in a carnal act and called him a “dog f. .ker”.

Kenny said it was clear if he had not commenced legal proceedings, he would not have won an on-air apology and said it had been “worthwhile” to pursue the case. The details and costs of the settlement will remain confidential.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to get the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster to behave decently, but at least it’s finally happened,” Kenny said.

Last week, former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau joined a growing group of prominent public figures who have declined invitations to speak at college commencement ceremonies because of protests. Birgeneau — and the students who might have been edified by his remarks — are victims of a shortsighted censoriousness that is becoming a familiar feature of graduation season.

A university ought to be an environment in which students, far from being protected from opposing views, are challenged to engage with them.

Birgeneau withdrew as a commencement speaker at Haverford College in Pennsylvania after some students there sent him a letter threatening to oppose his appearance unless he apologized (again) for the use of force against Occupy movement protesters at UC Berkeley in November 2011, and unless he complied with a long list of other demands.

One was that he write an open letter to Haverford students "explaining your position on the events of Nov. 9, what you learned from them, how you have put what you learned into practice and how your actions have or have not been in line with the values of peace, nonviolence and political participation." As a grace note, the students conceded that Birgeneau had done admirable work on behalf of "LGBT rights, affordable education and the plight of undocumented students."

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Sign Regulations and the Threat to Free Speech

In 2006, auto shop owner Wayne Weatherbee decided to expand his business by purchasing a vacant lot that had once held another auto shop dating back to the 1940s. But zoning officials in the city of Clermont, Florida, determined that Weatherbee's plans for the lot clashed with the city's aesthetic agenda and zoning regulations, so they asked him to first obtain a special permit before doing what he wanted with his own property.

Rather than apply for said permit, Weatherbee posted a dozen signs on his lot criticizing city officials, including the city manager and chief of police. One sign proclaimed:

"Intimidation/Harassment—Selective Law Enforcement—False Arrests—False Documents—What's Next? At Least They Haven't Taken My Freedom Of Speech YET!"

Predictably, the city’s next move was to take away Weatherbee's freedom of speech.

Since the 1950s, the United States Supreme Court has unfortunately held that basic constitutional liberties should yield to the government's self-proclaimed interest in tailoring local aesthetics. Writing for a unanimous Court in 1954, Justin William O. Douglas upheld Congress' decision to eliminate a supposedly blighted African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

"The concept of public welfare is broad and inclusive," wrote Douglas, and it includes "aesthetic as well as monetary values." It was the government's prerogative to "determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled," according to Douglas.

In December 2009, Clermont cited Weatherbee for violating city ordinances governing the display of signs on commercial property. All signs required permits unless they fell into an exempt category. There was an exemption for "temporary political signs," but that only applied to "a sign or poster advertising either a candidate for public office or a political cause subject to election." It did not cover Weatherbee's signs, which attacked public officials outside of the electoral process.

The Clermont Code Enforcement Board decided to fine Weatherbee $75 for every day he refused to take down the sign. His response was to file suit, and in March of this year, he finally prevailed. U.S. Senior District Judge William Terrell Hodges ruled in Weatherbee's favor, finding that Clermont's sign code was unconstitutional. Hodges chided city officials for arbitrarily distinguishing between purportedly political messages and other types of signs.

Unfortunately, Weatherbee's victory is the exception rather than the norm

No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.

Given the power of repetition, one consequence is that many Americans, especially young ones, believe that one side of the political spectrum -- the right -- is racist.

But while I've never associated conservatives with racism, I also never used to associate liberals with racism. But I was naive in this matter. While there are liberals and leftists who are not racist, I have come to understand that many are -- considerably more than conservatives.

Here are some proofs:

First, white liberals repeatedly state that America is a racist a country, and that all whites are racist. The latter doctrine is taught at virtually every American university. The only difference among whites, liberal professors teach their students, is not that some are racist and some are not; it is that some acknowledge their racism and some do not.

But isn't that an admission that liberals are racist? When a person says, "We are all racists," isn't he saying that he is a racist?

A second proof that racism has a home on the left is the left's primary argument against requiring all citizens to show identification when they vote. The liberal-left-Democrat argument, repeated by almost every editorial page, columnist and news outlet, and by every Democrat, is that such a requirement would greatly suppress the black vote. Thus, voter ID is racist. This is said so often and with such conviction that few people ask whether it is true: Will requiring ID really suppress the black vote?

The answer, shown in study after study, is no. Therefore, people who assume that voter ID would suppress the black vote have to believe that millions of blacks are uniquely incompetent citizens. Few things in civic life are simpler than obtaining an ID, and identification is needed almost everywhere in society. One has to believe in widespread black incompetence in order to believe that obtaining an ID is too difficult for a vast number of blacks.

And is virtually every democracy in the world racist for requiring voter ID? Again, the answer is no. The idea is absurd.

So there are only two possibilities here. Either Democrats and the left make this argument for political gain -- to reinforce their hold on black voters by scaring them into believing that Republicans are racist -- or the left really believes that blacks are less competent than other groups.

It is probable that both reasons -- political opportunism and liberals' belief in black inferiority -- are at work here. Most liberals, after all, do not believe that whites -- even those who didn't graduate high school -- have any difficulty obtaining an ID, but are certain that millions of blacks find this too onerous. This insult to black intelligence is as obvious as it is ignored.

Third is the liberal and left-wing advocacy of lowering standards for blacks -- what is known as affirmative action. How is it not plain as daylight that whites (and other non-blacks) who argue for the continued lowering of standards for blacks have a low view of blacks? White liberals never advocate lowering professional or academic standards for, let us say, Asian immigrants who recently arrived in America, often without money or any knowledge of English.

Why not? Because white liberals think that Asians are bright.

Finally, there is the Democratic and liberal opposition to school vouchers that would enable many blacks parents to send their children to schools superior to the awful ones that the (liberal-run) educational establishment has provided blacks children.

Most blacks want school vouchers, but most liberals vehemently oppose them. Why? Because what is good for teachers unions is of more importance to the left than what is good for blacks.

Who, then, is racist? By their own admission, and by the policies they pursue, the answer is the people who call themselves progressive.

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Stop arresting children for stupid tweets, and make our laws suitable for the internet age

Criminal law is such a blunt instrument online. What we already have is a poor fit, and analogies don’t seem to work. Downloading a film is not the same as stealing a car. Threatening someone on social media is not the same as threatening them in the street. And enforcing what laws you have is really difficult – when you do, you come off like an overzealous idiot.

Which brings me to today’s news. Police have investigated 2,000 children over the last three years for stupid things they have said on social media. And more than 1,300 of them have been charged or cautioned. Some of them were as young as nine.

Neither have adults got off lightly: over the same period almost 20,000 were investigated under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003: “sending grossly offensive or indecent messages”.

That is quite a lot of police time. Indeed, according to our story today “investigating online abuse is creating a headache for police forces, who have complained it is taking up so much time that they are unable to devote resources to more serious crimes”.

But social media offences aren’t just absorbing police resources, they seem to be absorbing all the heaviest punishments too.

In 2012 a British student called Glenn Maugham hacked into Facebook “just to see if he could”. He didn’t use the information he found, but still got eight months in jail.

Then, in the same week that Justin Lee-Collins got 140 hours of community service for harassing his girlfriend, Matthew Woods was jailed for 12 weeks over Facebook comments about April Jones.

But most tragic of all is the case of Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer who downloaded a large number of JSTOR articles (with no profit in mind). For this he was handed a 30 year jail sentence – using the same laws set up for bank robbers and organised criminals. He later committed suicide.

Censorship is making quite a comeback in the U.S. of A. these days, and it may well represent the left wing’s greatest act of hypocrisy.

The list of recent examples is long. Condoleezza Rice was chased away from delivering the commencement address to the 2014 graduating class of Rutgers University. Brandeis University also disinvited Somali feminist Ayaan Hirsi from their 2014 graduation ceremony. Hirsi is known for being an irritant of Islam, especially in her criticisms of female genital mutilation.

In February, Charles Krauthammer contributed an article about global warming to the Washington Post entitled, The myth of settled science. One point he makes is that the propaganda-style use of the media by climate change evangelists “mocks the very notion of settled science, which is nothing but a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” Ironically, climate-change zealots collected over 100,000 signatures petitioning the Post to refuse publishing Krauthammer’s article. Krauthammer responded that, “they don’t even hide it anymore. Now they proudly want certain arguments banished from discourse. The next step is book burning… Is there anything more anti-scientific than scientific truths being determined by petition and demonstration?”

Everyone who enjoyed Ben Stein’s engaging 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is well aware of the shunning that takes place in academia for professors who venture outside of the Darwinian Evolution paddock. For a 2014 update, University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne “was pivotal in stampeding Ball State University president Jo Ann Gora to issue a campus-wide gag order on teaching about intelligent design in science classrooms,” earning him the title 2014 Censor of the Year.

Then there is the parade of dismissals for getting caught conflicting with the rules of political correctness, a more subtle form of censorship. Mozilla fired their CEO on discovering that he had personally contributed to the campaign supporting traditional marriage in California – six years earlier. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to ban Chic-Fil-A franchises from the city for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.” And on a lighthearted note, A&E famously suspended the family patriarch of its hit show Duck Dynasty to muzzle his gauche comments on these social matters.

This brings up intriguing questions about truth, faith, and liberty. When competing thoughts are silenced, is there complete intellectual conviction by those holding the prevailing belief? Or is censorship merely an elixir used to quell a nagging doubt?

The most disturbing violence is employed by Islamic nations to silence religious dissent among their own, believing citizens. While the global quality of life rapidly advances all around them, the natural path to Islamic enlightenment is trammeled. It is as if the Imams themselves hold the least confidence in the ability of their practices to withstand the corrosive effects of reason.

In the new world 1776, bold faith came through deliberate vulnerability. Imagine the Christians who signed the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The founding fathers avoided the temptation to compel Protestantism. Instead, they confidently participated in creating a culture where their faith would flourish on its own merits, or become displaced by competitive philosophies. They trusted in the resilience of truth.

A virtuous faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it is mere religion when people invest their credence in a utopia of human imaginations. Charles Krauthammer called out the global warming militants with, “All of this is driven by this ideology which, in and of itself, is a matter of almost theology.”

We entrust our government with weapons to fulfill their primary objective of ensuring our rights. We entrust churches with theology to fulfill their primary objective of advancing eternal truth. The situation becomes volatile when a well-armed government assumes the authority of theology. It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.

Sunday, June 01, 2014

Rape is quite commonly used as a metaphor for various unpleasant things but I guess the critics below would not even know what a metaphor is

Charlize Theron doesn’t Google herself. Which is just as well, given what’s being said about her today.

The Oscar-winning actress caused an online furore after comparing press coverage of her private life to rape. The comment came during a Sky News interview in the UK, where she was promoting her new film A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Theron’s interviewer mentioned he had typed her name into Google and was surprised to see so much gossip about her boyfriends, appearance and children. Her reaction was adamant.

“I don’t do that. When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start, I guess, feeling raped,” she said.

“When it comes to your son and your private life…some people might relish in all of that stuff…but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I’m very protective over them.”

But online communities seized on Theron’s “rape” analogy, accusing her of being insensitive and trivialising sexual assault. Some users commented that while a life in the public eye is a choice, rape is not.

It's certainly a rather old-fashioned word. And they were old guys who used it

TWO veteran radio commentators for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have been suspended while management investigates an allegedly racist remark that went to air during a recent rugby league match.

Warren Ryan, a former premiership-winning coach, was heard saying: “There’s a line in a movie where the old darkey says, someone says, ‘quittin’ time.”

David Morrow was being investigated for finding it humorous.

Morrow was also suspended by ABC management last year after a joke described as racist unintentionally went to air.

The ABC announced the suspensions in a statement Friday, after complaints made by listeners following the May 23 match between the Sydney Roosters and Canterbury.

The statement said “both have been asked to submit a formal response regarding the matter ... until the investigation is complete, no further comment will be made”.

Is the American national anthem politically incorrect? From the 4th verse:Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

Mohammad

The truth can be offensive to some but it must be said

"HATE SPEECH" is free speech: The U.S. Supreme Court stated the general rule regarding protected speech in Texas v. Johnson (109 S.Ct. at 2544), when it held: "The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Federal courts have consistently followed this. Said Virginia federal district judge Claude Hilton: "The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane."

Even some advocacy of violence is protected by the 1st Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that speech advocating violent illegal actions to bring about social change is protected by the First Amendment "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

The double standard: Atheists can put up signs and billboards saying that Christianity is wrong and that is hunky dory. But if a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, that is attacked as "hate speech"

One for the militant atheists to consider: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" -- Thomas Jefferson

"I think no subject should be off-limits, and I regard the laws in many Continental countries criminalizing Holocaust denial as philosophically repugnant and practically useless – in that they confirm to Jew-haters that the Jews control everything (otherwise why aren’t we allowed to talk about it?)" -- Mark Steyn

Voltaire's most famous saying was actually a summary of Voltaire's thinking by one of his biographers rather than something Voltaire said himself. Nonetheless it is a wholly admirable sentiment: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I am of a similar mind.

The traditional advice about derogatory speech: "Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you". Apparently people today are not as emotionally robust as their ancestors were.

Why conservatives should not respond to Leftist abuse: "Never wrestle with a pig, because you'll both just get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

The KKK were members of the DEMOCRATIC party. Google "Klanbake" if you doubt it

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

Leftists often pretend that any mention of race is "racist" -- unless they mention it, of course. But leaving such irrational propaganda aside, which statements really are racist? Can statements of fact about race be "racist"? Such statements are simply either true or false. The most sweeping possible definition of racism is that a racist statement is a statement that includes a negative value judgment of some race. Absent that, a statement is not racist, for all that Leftists might howl that it is. Facts cannot be racist so nor is the simple statement of them racist. Here is a statement that cannot therefore be racist by itself, though it could be false: "Blacks are on average much less intelligent than whites". If it is false and someone utters it, he could simply be mistaken or misinformed.

Categorization is a basic human survival skill so racism as the Left define it (i.e. any awareness of race) is in fact neither right nor wrong. It is simply human

Whatever your definition of racism, however, a statement that simply mentions race is not thereby racist -- though one would think otherwise from American Presidential election campaigns. Is a statement that mentions dogs, "doggist" or a statement that mentions cats, "cattist"?

If any mention of racial differences is racist then all Leftists are racist too -- as "affirmative action" is an explicit reference to racial differences

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated." -- Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862

Gimlet-eyed Leftist haters sometimes pounce on the word "white" as racist. Will the time come when we have to refer to the White House as the "Full spectrum of light" House?

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

Mostly, a gaffe is just truth slipping out

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

It seems a pity that the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus is now little known. Remember, wrote the Stoic thinker, "that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your endeavour not to let your impressions carry you away."

"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?" -- English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in Areopagitica

Leftists can try to get you fired from your job over something that you said and that's not an attack on free speech. But if you just criticize something that they say, then that IS an attack on free speech

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of much that goes on today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here